Wanted: Some Statistics
174 THE COM THE newly organized Advertising Association of America counsels its members to good behavior: "Avoid all manner of exaggeration, The misrepresentation and falsification. Re- Gospel...
...And a great deal of information that must be desired by everyone interested in this work: conference, ne~ .9 paper and university, is unavailable...
...But as the censt;i" ,yune I9, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL i75 takers in 192o were not required to ask questions re-garding employment, it is twenty years since we have ~'ad any information on the subject more conclusive than estimates based on inferences from the biennial .ensus of manufactures, and on the increase or decrease 3f payrolls...
...Other experts have indicated that he figure is considerably higher...
...One proposal is already been made--the suggestion, which comes from Great Britain but which the French will, in all fi~elihood, second with alacrity: to evacuate the Rhine .9erritories...
...not forever will the quest of the epithet lead large numbers of the human race an in-human chase...
...Schacht discoursed upon at Paris to no avail: "Economically speaking, Germany cannot get on without colonies...
...Thus his famous article written for the Journal de Gen~ve during 1926 , but not published until recently, has been widely accepted as "expressive of the German mentality...
...Thus intg" each section of the country the N. C. W. C. is carryidf the truth about industrial America--or as much of th...
...To the credit of the Allied nations it must be said that they have come nearer to realizing this fact...
...A~zcordingly one may a~ume with reasonable security that during the decade ,"tO follow a great deal of progress toward "reconcilia- "t'bn" will be effected...
...Of course many battle-wise veterans of the advertising business have no higher an opinion of the intelligence of their audiences than Mr...
...A multitude of minor but quite o~inous difficulties were removed by the persistence a'td tact of Mr...
...Kbout a year later currency and business had both agged, and the Reparations Commission had fixed ~,~he liability at $32,ooo,ooo,ooona drop of nearly ne-half inside of a year...
...It would be u ~', available even to a President's fact-finding commission...
...But it must be noted that what the Conferences, and all similarly functioning groups, are doing is the second, and later, part of a double job...
...for while the pressure upon ~ermany will be heavy, a victory over extravagant ciauvinism has been gained and the way is clear for removal of irritating conditions...
...Against such economic mal...
...Not forever, avers Miss Freda Kirchwey, shall we be tortured by the double-edged gift of articulateness...
...We are proportionately Bookless glad to hail its latest prophecy: a Future golden age by grace of an old metaphor and a new paradox, an age of literary silence...
...In all probability this arrangement will stand for ~n years, providing no unforeseen catastrophe occurs...
...Indeed many of his brushes with hostile opinion have been due less to his decisions as a banker (among which his opposition to municipal loans was perhaps the most fiercely debated) than to his insistence upon political "opin- ions...
...Soon he had become a powerful executive who owed as much to the political influences then operative as to his purely financial skill...
...There is no justice in prohibiting Germany from having colonies, while France has not even a sufficient number of inhabitants to cultivate its own territory and is obliged to import hundreds of thousands of Italians...
...Occasionally there is a sign that this estimate must eventually be revised...
...In general, the conf," ences have insisted on the application of Catholic prir~ciples to social and economic relations, and have askc.d a fuller recognition of the rights stressed in t'JBishops' Reconstruction Program of I9 I9...
...England has 2,ooo,ooo unemployed citizens, but she feeds them on the income from a vast colonial empire into which her unemployed do not wish to go...
...With tools and colors andmodeling clay they are learning to take the burden of stamping their egos on life from those brain-centres which produce lives of the Presidents, unflinching self-revelations, free verse and monographs on free verse, and to transfer it to those centres which produce baskets and bird houses and pictures and beds of radishes...
...What must be discovered first of all is how many men in tii' country are usually out of work, how many enjoy sporadic employment, what percentages are contributed by each state, and what are the figures for each toy, and city in the state...
...More important, however, are the following remarks regarding German colonies, a subject which Dr...
...But it did not fail to call attention to something not so well known to the nation at large, that is, the existem of conditions almost as serious in the Colorado mines...
...The spectacle was a l:,'tle vague and hard to follow even through the Paris papers, "which reported everything doggedly and in detail...
...Here is a job for the census of 193o...
...And the agree- Bent just signed calls for a total of $27,ooo,ooo,ooo, i/~ which sum are included the charges incurred under the Dawes plan, the Allied debts and the costs of werse armies of occupation...
...Schacht...
...he payments due annually have been fixed, and the ~mmittee has agreed upon a mechanism--somewhat :.implicated, it is true, but scientific in principle--for Ja~mdling the money...
...And a great humanitari~ purpose is being served...
...after the bearing comes fallowness and after the effort re- pose...
...That is, they can demonstrate that the prevailing weaknesses of our industrial system are unnecessary, and being unnecessary, unfair...
...William Nelson Taft, and ultimately to the Boston Better Business Bureau, where he got them...
...and with what are we ex-pected to feed them...
...But for the purposes of remedial action, surely, one ca,l place no reliance on figures which differ by two millions or so from others equally worthy of trust...
...truth as has been learned...
...practice as fair-minded people everywhere are concerned with, information--propaganda--is about the best weapon...
...If it can be carried everywhere, a st~fficient sympathy will rise, and readjustment follow...
...Then came the Dawes sys- m, which judiciously ignored totals...
...PROGRESS TOWARD PRINCIPLE F ~OR weeks the members of the Experts' Committee J have toiled and argued...
...37 percent said it was 'misleading...
...Her political and economic actualities cannot be ignored, and co-operation with rather than opposition to her seems the formula for general safety...
...At the end of ten years ?urope may have recovered to such an extent that a new adjustment of its finances will be possible, One of the most interesting aspects of the confer- ence has been the contrast between the personalities of Mr...
...But while in some cases their discussions c~n turn upon original studies, prepared for the occasion, for the most part they must disseminate information gathered from the statistics of the United States De partment of Labor, the census of manufactures, etc...
...More, our children are being trained in sub- stitutes for the self-expression of the written word...
...He represents the type of public ser- vant whom the Reich may be said to have graduated out of the ranks of the old bureaucracy...
...It is because of his representative importance, be- cause of his bold insistence upon what his countrymen conceive of as economic fact, that Dr...
...Young and Dr...
...These things all have their term...
...I I percent characterized it as 'false,' and 6 percent felt that it was 'truthful.' " OUR contemporary, the Nation, has predicted vari- ous millenniums (or millennia) with an enthusiasm which has left us something laggard For a and doubting...
...If the Nation can hasten the day on which the change really begins to tell, it will not only have relieved mankind from a frightful oppression~the oppression of too much reading--but will also have done more to promote universal brotherhood than all the peace congresses ever held...
...We cannot well afford to miss this opportunity of getting information so necessary in the most accurate ~nd cheapest possible way...
...It is," he declared, "foolish to believe that eastern Europe can endure in the form it has now taken...
...Germany is now, even more clearly than before the war, Europe's "unknown quantity...
...So many people then believed in a dismembered Reich that it seemed quite r4atural to exact remuneration for every cow and cat Chat had died during the period of hostilities...
...The "debt" properly g 0,~ called has been scaled down to the sum of $19,ooo,ooo,ooo, present value...
...She is entitled to them as we are, for the same reasons...
...Schacht's career it is certainly true, has been based to a considerable extent upon his willingness to see the problems con-fronting his country as a whole...
...About a year ago, Sec~, tary of Labor Davis placed it at 1,875,ooo...
...stance, is something which no one in the United States has yet done satisfactorily...
...Belloc says in one of the wisest of his books, it is by working with their hands that men grow into companionship, not by spinning words out of their weary noodles...
...It is said that his rise was due to a chance discovery, by a supe- rior, of his skill in giving out financial news to the press...
...For what it is worth, we offer the estimate that 50 percent of the advertising carried in the average edition of an aver- age newspaper could not be accepted if these or similar principles of conduct aroused anything like a general acquiescence...
...3,t Versailles there was no limit to the claims pressed t~gainst the defeated Germans...
...We, too, have our people out of work...
...We are indebted for some illuminating figures to Mr...
...Italy, on the other hand, has the right to ask for colonies...
...The difficulties of Europe must be faced in common or suffered to triumph...
...But the significance of the agreement finally "ontrived is rather easy to determine if one follows ghe history of reparations since the close of the war...
...There is only one solution pos- siblemto permit us to divert our unemployed to other territory...
...The latter is, in more than one respect, an index to those aspects of the contemporary German mind which do not often re-ceive attention...
...When this has been done, reductions in trmament may be hoped for, with a markedly benefi- ent effect upon budgets...
...Ascertaining the facts about unemployment, for in...
...174 THE COM THE newly organized Advertising Association of America counsels its members to good behavior: "Avoid all manner of exaggeration, The misrepresentation and falsification...
...In this he voiced the opinion that Poland's use of the Danzig corridor is a blunder for which all eastern Europe must pay heavily, as well as a crime against the Reich...
...Frank Kent has of the voting public, and know that hokum is as effective in business as in politics...
...MONWEAL June 19, I9~9 WANTED-SOME STATISTICS S OME very good work has been done this winter and spring by the N. C. W. C.'s Regional Co~aferences on Industrial Problems...
...At other meetings, the half-truths of prosperity have been pretty well shown up in reports on the evils ~ the new industrial revolution...
...There is agreement on only one point: that the figure is high...
...Young...
...John A. Ryan has estimated that the number of unemploy'ed is 3,ooo,ooo...
...At best, there is only a confused idea of the extent of this condition...
...The most recent o~e at Denver, for instance, naturally devoted an important part of its program to a discussion of the indecent working conditions in the Colorado sugar-beet fieldJ...
...Schacht has made so deep an impression upon current public opin- ion...
...Re- Gospel of frain from derogatory or disparaging Advertising statements that tend to injure or discredit legitimate competitors or other business or industry, relying for success on the merits of our own product and services...
...Of 5,ooo consumers who were asked their opinions on retail advertising, "45 percent replied that they believed it to be 'exaggerated...
...4" Of course such data can be efficiently gathered onll~ by the United States Census Bureau...
...As Mr...
...By , x92o, however, the Spa conference had already scaled the German debt from infinity to $58,000,000,000...
Vol. 10 • June 1929 • No. 7
